[ExI] Are Dyson swarms a good idea?

[Jason Resch]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 12:19 PM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 28, 2026 at 9:36 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> *> **Efficiency is the amount of useful work per unit of energy.*
>
>
> *No it is not. Efficiency Is the measure of the RATIO between total energy
> and the energy that can be used for work. *
>
> *> if the "99.953% efficient" (to use your wording) computer performs N
>> computations per watt-second, then the "99.99999999983% efficient" computer
>> performs 3,805,941,691.36N computations per watt-second.*
>
>
> *What the hell?! I thought you were over perpetual motion machines and
> ignoring the Second Law Of Thermodynamics. Apparently not. *
>

I think you're either unfamiliar with, or aren't understanding, this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle

Jason




> *John K Clark*
>
> *John K Clark *
>
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>> On Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 9:10 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 28, 2026 at 7:59 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> *> Do you agree Landauer's limit depends on the temperature of the
>>>> heatsink?*
>>>
>>>
>>> *Certainly, but when your heat sink gets colder and colder eventually
>>> you reach a point of diminishing returns, and at 2.7° kelvin that point has
>>> been reached because the difference between **0.99353% efficiency and **0.9999999999983% efficiency
>>> is too trivial to worry about. It's certainly not worth the trouble of
>>> compressing Jupiter into a 20 foot wide Black Hole which, correct me if I'm
>>> wrong, I believe would be rather troublesome to do. *
>>>
>>
>> Efficiency is the amount of useful work per unit of energy.
>>
>> If the "99.953% efficient" (to use your wording) computer performs N
>> computations per watt-second, then the "99.99999999983% efficient" computer
>> performs 3,805,941,691.36N computations per watt-second.
>>
>> Is not a 3.8 billion fold increase in the number of computations that you
>> can perform for the same unit of energy worth pursuing? It hardly seems
>> trivial to me.
>>
>>
>>
>>> *> this is just grasping at straws to defend Dyson swarms in the face of
>>>> better methods having already been demonstrated.*
>>>
>>>
>>> *If there are better ways of producing amounts of power that are
>>> LITERALLY  astronomical and keep doing so for billions of years than Dyson
>>> spheres I have not heard of them,*
>>>
>> * but I do know one thing, even if they exist they would still have to
>>> obey the Second Law Of Thermodynamics, and that means we should be able to
>>> observe them. But we have seen nothing.   *
>>>
>>
>> If they shunt waste heat into black holes (which is thermodynamically
>> optimal) then we wouldn't see anything.
>>
>> If they run reversible computers (which is optimally efficient) then we
>> wouldn't see anything.
>>
>> Jason
>>
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>
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